Posted by SLS on December 24, 2012, at 5:20:35 [reposted on December 26, 2012, at 10:23:02 | original URL]
In reply to Please sign this official White House petition, posted by LostBoyinNC43 on December 23, 2012, at 22:38:04
This is a great topic that you have brought up.
What is your definition of "mental illness", and in what ways is schizophrenia different as a phenomenon that it should be excluded from that definition?
Actually, I think your proposal will do very little more than amplify the stigma associated with the term "mental illness". Alzheimer's Dementia is also a mental illness, and is no less biological in its phenomenology than Parkinson's Disease. Bipolar Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder have also been demonstrated to have genetic and physiological underpinnings. What about ADHD? Should this disorder be removed from the domain of mental illness, despite the fact that it alters mental function? Surely, schizophrenia alters mental function.
Do you have schizophrenia? What about any other psychiatic challenges? If so, do you feel somehow stigmatized when anyone refers to you as having a mental illness? Is it possible that you yourself stigmatize mental illness by wanting to separate yourself from it? If your goal is solely to get more funding for research into schizophrenia, why not just get the government to appropriate a greater share of its NIH budget to the NIMH? Why leave everyone else out in the cold?
I am very happy to see people like you become activists for the mentally ill. However, I am not sure that I can support your idea at this point.
- ScottSome see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1033828
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20120327/msgs/1033831.html